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3.89 AVERAGE
3.89 AVERAGE
adventurous
mysterious
reflective
relaxing
fast-paced
When discussing this book with a friend who has read it fairly recently, he described reading it for the first time as though he could see what was coming because it had been done so many times over. As if the author were just following typical sci-fi storylines. And then he explained that he realized this was probably where those storylines actually came from.
And I think that sums it up well. It is a strange walk through the familiar, a deja vu you've never actually experienced, comfortable yet still entertaining. If you're a fan of sci-fi, but never read Asimov's Foundation, do yourself a favor and see the (forgive me) foundation of the genre get built.
And I think that sums it up well. It is a strange walk through the familiar, a deja vu you've never actually experienced, comfortable yet still entertaining. If you're a fan of sci-fi, but never read Asimov's Foundation, do yourself a favor and see the (forgive me) foundation of the genre get built.
adventurous
inspiring
medium-paced
funny
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Enjoyed the overall concept. However the last third became pretty dry and tedious to get through. Also all the characters appeared to have a similar voice which is too bad considering the vast majority of the book is told via conversation
adventurous
emotional
funny
hopeful
reflective
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
mysterious
reflective
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
I read this after watching the series on Apple TV. It’s very different from the show. Essentially only what happens in Terminus in the show, with the foundation itself and the crises predicted by Seldon. I really enjoyed it for its linear story telling, it tackles the first three of 8 predicted crises. The only drawback is one I have with many other sci-fi works of a similar/past era: the lack of imagination of the authors. You can imagine a whole galactic empire with planets and peoples and whole fields of science, but you couldn’t imagine women interested in anything more than trite frippery and jewellery? Or to be honest women speaking almost at all? It’s common of the ‘greats’ of the genre, but like come on
adventurous
challenging
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
Was recommended this series by a friend and I loved it! I found it really insightful and interesting to see what spurred a seldom crisis and then what tactics resolved it in that instance. It was hard to move on from some characters and at first, I expected the book to return to them. But alas. Just good character creation I guess! I’ll plan to read the next few books in the series following this kickoff.
adventurous
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
adventurous
reflective
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
this book is quite charming when you approach it knowing what to expect. judging by some of the poor reviews, a lot of people didn’t do that.
if you are looking for a sci-fi saga full of unforgettable characters with strong growth, don’t read this! Foundation, at its core, is a collection of short stories connected by century-old lore that track the rise of a new empire. these stories are just short enough that the characters are not given the chance to be strong. but that’s fine! because in exchange, you get witty dialogue and cool space dudes playing cool space politics games! and that rocked!!
i’m also a huge fan of the way this book approaches the rise of society and the elements that shape mass appeal. each story’s focus was super intriguing to cling to: sociology, scientific progress, religion as mass propaganda, economic warfare. it’s hard to pick a favourite section but i think i lean towards Part 2 (Encylopedists) and Part 5 (Merchant Princes).
TLDR; this book is great. it has its flaws in character work and representation, but it delivers as an anthology of societal progress that is also cool science fiction. i’ll be jumping into book 2 asap!!
if you are looking for a sci-fi saga full of unforgettable characters with strong growth, don’t read this! Foundation, at its core, is a collection of short stories connected by century-old lore that track the rise of a new empire. these stories are just short enough that the characters are not given the chance to be strong. but that’s fine! because in exchange, you get witty dialogue and cool space dudes playing cool space politics games! and that rocked!!
i’m also a huge fan of the way this book approaches the rise of society and the elements that shape mass appeal. each story’s focus was super intriguing to cling to: sociology, scientific progress, religion as mass propaganda, economic warfare. it’s hard to pick a favourite section but i think i lean towards Part 2 (Encylopedists) and Part 5 (Merchant Princes).
TLDR; this book is great. it has its flaws in character work and representation, but it delivers as an anthology of societal progress that is also cool science fiction. i’ll be jumping into book 2 asap!!
I struggled to get into Asimov's iconic series when I was younger, so I figured I'm due to give it another (hopefully fairer and wiser) try. While I certainly better appreciated the book's massive influence this time around, and was not nearly as bored by the continually shifting parade of characters, I also felt like the book is showing its age more than ever.
First, the brilliant: The twists and turns of the plot are fantastic. I remembered little beyond the basic premise of the genius who predicts the future of civilization, and while in real life I'm extremely skeptical that humans are capable of successfully predicting the behaviors of other chaotic humans, even in broad strokes, much less channeling such behaviors into a stream that spans decades, Asimov does such a masterful job slowly unfolding the intriguing story that it just makes you wanna go, ok, forget about black swans and unpredictable technological advances and everything else, if it was possible, wouldn't this be cool? The initial teased explanations of Seldon's "psychohistory" are mere tropy technobabble ("validity of the set-transformation.... forbidden socio-operation"), but at its best, especially later in the book, the sweeping explorations of politics, religion, and economics are both reasonable and clever. The tension between the idea that the plan only works if no one knows about it and the idea that people won't trust the plan to let it work unless they know about it makes for a fascinating paradox, to state just one of the thought-provoking concepts Asimov presents us.
I also appreciated the book's compact structure. If someone were writing this story today, they would probably try to tell this single book in a five-part volume of several hundred pages each (or perhaps a multi-seasonal streaming television series....?). Asimov focuses the story on five acts representing the most important hinge points of a century's worth of time, but he's even more targeted than that. By stripping out the majority of the action and skipping each chapter to the next important dialogue, Asimov continually advances the plot, explains the consequences of the last action, and sets up the next one, all within a couple hundred relatively small pages. While this occasionally makes for confusion on the one hand or stilted over-explaining on the other, for the most part it's a smart storytelling device.
Second, the neutral: As one of the first popular science fiction writers, Asimov's influence on the genre is undeniable. While I can't be certain of the true origins of any individual element without engaging in heavy research, Foundation, published in 1951, abounds in recognizable features of later sci-fi, from major concepts (the idea of preserving knowledge through an apocalypse was later explored in A Canticle for Leibowitz, 1959) to minor sociological commentary ("coming out into the open with nothing but sky over you might just give you a nervous breakdown" - sound like Belters to anyone?). I especially noticed the Foundation's fingerprints all over Star Wars, starting with the globally urban planet of Coruscant, I mean Trantor (!), continuing through the vaguely-realistic-but-slightly-modified character names (Gaal. Han. Salvor. Poe. Jaim. Dak. (!!)), and on through the ship with "nuclear blasts capable of blowing up a planet" (!!!) Oh, and how about that nuclear "drill" that comes out of a "sheath" and slices straight through metal? (Ok, maybe that one's a bit of a stretch... but they did try to keep that "technology" in the hands of an "ancient religion"...)
Speaking of nuclear technology... it's commonly observed that science-fiction "predicts" the future in a way that ultimately betrays the historical era it was written in. (Even in my new favorite series The Expanse, the characters of an unspecified future century have an amusingly consistent knack for operating "hand terminals" like iPhones from the 2010's.) I can't speak for the rest of the series yet, but the first Foundation book is oozing in 1950's. In clear whispers of the post-WWII Cold War era, everything is nuclear in Asimov's universe. Nuclear guns, nuclear shields, nuclear drills. And everything else about society is stuck in the 1950's. Seriously. It started out quaint and amusing, but it's so pervasive that it kept distracting me from the story. Our first character lands on a planet via a spaceship that still carries physical mail, pays for a taxi with physical coins (yes but it's an air taxi), and gets to his room via an elevator with a human elevator operator! It's almost like the only real anticipated technological development in twelve thousand years in Asimov's universe is... spaceships. Which, granted, is a huge thing to anticipate eighteen years before the moon landing, or six years before freaking Sputnik! But still. For a story that's supposed to suspend my disbelief about the possibility of successfully predicting the future, it's at least a little ironic, don't you think?
Finally, the negative. Speaking of the 1950's. The three human employees our first character had to go through to get to his hotel room? They're all men. The spy who shadows him? 'nother man. The people on the council? All men. The priests? Men. The soldiers? The spaceship crew? The leaders on the other planets? Men. Men. Men. I was starting to wonder if females even existed anymore in Asimov's techno-future (maybe men just spring up out of holes in the ground?) when, finally, 78% of the way through the book, we get our first female character. And... she's literally the most stereotyped, infantilized, look-at-this-pretty-necklace female character imaginable! Seriously Asimov??? I know times have changed, but I don't think it's unreasonable to at least be a little disappointed here. If we consider just political characters... the first woman was elected to the United States Congress before Asimov was born. By the time he was writing this novel, the percentage of women in the House of Representatives had slowly but consistently crept up to about 2%. I'm not even asking for him to imagine a utopian future of total equality here, how about just not totally completely 100% male every time, every planet, every where.... Was that really so impossible to imagine? (Tho I am curious to see how this element plays out as the series progresses through its publication years) I can't help but feel that all of these dated factors at least somewhat threaten to undermine this book's continued relevance.
But neither am I ready to throw out Asimov's genius altogether. If I recall correctly, though quite hazily, the second book takes the skepticism of psychohistory's reliability and elevates it into a major and fascinating plot point...
First, the brilliant: The twists and turns of the plot are fantastic. I remembered little beyond the basic premise of the genius who predicts the future of civilization, and while in real life I'm extremely skeptical that humans are capable of successfully predicting the behaviors of other chaotic humans, even in broad strokes, much less channeling such behaviors into a stream that spans decades, Asimov does such a masterful job slowly unfolding the intriguing story that it just makes you wanna go, ok, forget about black swans and unpredictable technological advances and everything else, if it was possible, wouldn't this be cool? The initial teased explanations of Seldon's "psychohistory" are mere tropy technobabble ("validity of the set-transformation.... forbidden socio-operation"), but at its best, especially later in the book, the sweeping explorations of politics, religion, and economics are both reasonable and clever. The tension between the idea that the plan only works if no one knows about it and the idea that people won't trust the plan to let it work unless they know about it makes for a fascinating paradox, to state just one of the thought-provoking concepts Asimov presents us.
I also appreciated the book's compact structure. If someone were writing this story today, they would probably try to tell this single book in a five-part volume of several hundred pages each (or perhaps a multi-seasonal streaming television series....?). Asimov focuses the story on five acts representing the most important hinge points of a century's worth of time, but he's even more targeted than that. By stripping out the majority of the action and skipping each chapter to the next important dialogue, Asimov continually advances the plot, explains the consequences of the last action, and sets up the next one, all within a couple hundred relatively small pages. While this occasionally makes for confusion on the one hand or stilted over-explaining on the other, for the most part it's a smart storytelling device.
Second, the neutral: As one of the first popular science fiction writers, Asimov's influence on the genre is undeniable. While I can't be certain of the true origins of any individual element without engaging in heavy research, Foundation, published in 1951, abounds in recognizable features of later sci-fi, from major concepts (the idea of preserving knowledge through an apocalypse was later explored in A Canticle for Leibowitz, 1959) to minor sociological commentary ("coming out into the open with nothing but sky over you might just give you a nervous breakdown" - sound like Belters to anyone?). I especially noticed the Foundation's fingerprints all over Star Wars, starting with the globally urban planet of Coruscant, I mean Trantor (!), continuing through the vaguely-realistic-but-slightly-modified character names (Gaal. Han. Salvor. Poe. Jaim. Dak. (!!)), and on through the ship with "nuclear blasts capable of blowing up a planet" (!!!) Oh, and how about that nuclear "drill" that comes out of a "sheath" and slices straight through metal? (Ok, maybe that one's a bit of a stretch... but they did try to keep that "technology" in the hands of an "ancient religion"...)
Speaking of nuclear technology... it's commonly observed that science-fiction "predicts" the future in a way that ultimately betrays the historical era it was written in. (Even in my new favorite series The Expanse, the characters of an unspecified future century have an amusingly consistent knack for operating "hand terminals" like iPhones from the 2010's.) I can't speak for the rest of the series yet, but the first Foundation book is oozing in 1950's. In clear whispers of the post-WWII Cold War era, everything is nuclear in Asimov's universe. Nuclear guns, nuclear shields, nuclear drills. And everything else about society is stuck in the 1950's. Seriously. It started out quaint and amusing, but it's so pervasive that it kept distracting me from the story. Our first character lands on a planet via a spaceship that still carries physical mail, pays for a taxi with physical coins (yes but it's an air taxi), and gets to his room via an elevator with a human elevator operator! It's almost like the only real anticipated technological development in twelve thousand years in Asimov's universe is... spaceships. Which, granted, is a huge thing to anticipate eighteen years before the moon landing, or six years before freaking Sputnik! But still. For a story that's supposed to suspend my disbelief about the possibility of successfully predicting the future, it's at least a little ironic, don't you think?
Finally, the negative. Speaking of the 1950's. The three human employees our first character had to go through to get to his hotel room? They're all men. The spy who shadows him? 'nother man. The people on the council? All men. The priests? Men. The soldiers? The spaceship crew? The leaders on the other planets? Men. Men. Men. I was starting to wonder if females even existed anymore in Asimov's techno-future (maybe men just spring up out of holes in the ground?) when, finally, 78% of the way through the book, we get our first female character. And... she's literally the most stereotyped, infantilized, look-at-this-pretty-necklace female character imaginable! Seriously Asimov??? I know times have changed, but I don't think it's unreasonable to at least be a little disappointed here. If we consider just political characters... the first woman was elected to the United States Congress before Asimov was born. By the time he was writing this novel, the percentage of women in the House of Representatives had slowly but consistently crept up to about 2%. I'm not even asking for him to imagine a utopian future of total equality here, how about just not totally completely 100% male every time, every planet, every where.... Was that really so impossible to imagine? (Tho I am curious to see how this element plays out as the series progresses through its publication years) I can't help but feel that all of these dated factors at least somewhat threaten to undermine this book's continued relevance.
But neither am I ready to throw out Asimov's genius altogether. If I recall correctly, though quite hazily, the second book takes the skepticism of psychohistory's reliability and elevates it into a major and fascinating plot point...